For some, gay marriage is bittersweet

July 15, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 12:28 p.m.

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Michael Witkowski has been a bartender at Bounce in Laguna Beach for 15 years and celebrated his 21st anniversary with his partner, Bob Tyler, on June 26. They will be celebrating their anniversary at Mare in Laguna Beach and discussing the idea of marriage. "I couldn't believe my ears," Witowski said, upon hearing about the Supreme Court's decision that morning. ISAAC ARJONILLA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Gabriel (Gabby) Huerta, one of the bartenders at Bounce in Laguna Beach, mixes a Manhattan for a patron. SAM GANGWER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Gabriel (Gabby) Huerta, one of the bartenders at Bounce in Laguna Beach pours a martini for a regular. SAM GANGWER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A rainbow flag hangs from the peak of the roof above a poster of James Dean in the wondow of Bounce in Laguna Beach. SAM GANGWER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Michael Witkowski has been a bartender at Bounce in Laguna Beach for 15 years and celebrated his 21st anniversary with his partner, Bob Tyler, on June 26. They will be celebrating their anniversary at Mare in Laguna Beach and discussing the idea of marriage. "I couldn't believe my ears," Witowski said, upon hearing about the Supreme Court's decision that morning.ISAAC ARJONILLA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Michael Witkowski, a bartender at Bounce, a gay-owned bar in Laguna Beach, almost dropped the glass he was filling for one of his regulars.

Earlier that morning, his partner had given him a ring for their 21st anniversary as a couple. Now, a bit before lunch, a voice on the bar's radio was telling him that gay and lesbian couples in California could get married again.

"I hadn't felt that excited for a long time," Witkowski said.

"Last time there was gay marriage – for all of two months – we didn't think it was going away. So we waited a little, because we had other things to do.

"We're not going to wait this time."

And, indeed, the ruling has been welcomed by most of his customers.

But it's also bittersweet. Many of the Bounce regulars – middle-age and older men who lived in Laguna Beach when it was the hub of LGBT life in Orange County – view the ruling as coming too late to change their lives.

What's more, they say the ruling puts them closer to the mainstream and, as it does, it tears down the gay community they helped create.

MIXED FEELINGS

These days, many of the regulars at Bounce are in their 60s and 70s. A few, like Witkowski, stand to benefit from the Supreme Court's ruling last month.

But for most, the victory of legal marriage has come too late.

Brad Morrison, a hairdresser in his late 50s, said he's not in the market to marry right now. His partner of 20 years died a decade ago, and he doesn't have anybody in his life.

He said he wished the Supreme Court had made its decision decades ago, during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. "There would have been a whole number of benefits from it for us. My partner and I had to work everything out very carefully, whether it was our house or our savings or whatever it was. ... We would have been spared that."

But there's another, less-obvious reason why the patrons of Bounce are underwhelmed by the prospect of marriage equality: Many of them believe it will undermine what little remains of Laguna's once-vibrant gay community.

"The community was more close-knit ... because it had to be," said Rick Clements, a Bounce regular who moved to Laguna Beach in the 1980s.

"Back then, it didn't matter if you were a janitor or a movie star – you were gay, and you had to look out for your kind. There was a kind of fellow feeling you don't see anymore. And I'm betting marriage isn't going to help things."

Not everyone at Bounce sees marriage equality as a threat.

Another bartender, Gabriel Huerta, 61, agrees that the ruling came too late to benefit his generation. But when he thinks about marriage equality, he can see only benefits, starting with tangible things such as visitation rights at hospitals and less financial paperwork for new couples.

And, he says, the ruling reflects a growing inclusion of gays in mainstream society. "I think changes have already happened," he said. "Gays are ... not chastised anymore for being who they are."

ONCE AN OASIS

Nearly all of the Bounce regulars say they grew up facing discrimination in one form or another. But looking back, some say that very discrimination strengthened their will to create communities of their own, as they did in Laguna Beach, New York and San Francisco, among others.

"This place was my oasis," Clements said. "I was never alone here. Not for one minute."

Laguna had a flourishing gay subculture as early as the 1950s. Two short-lived bars, Barefoot and Dante's, catered primarily to single gay men after dark. Some nights, Clements says, he caught glimpses of dancing, same-sex couples coming out of these bars on family trips to Laguna Beach. That exposure, he said, made the experience of coming to terms with his sexuality less isolating.

"It helped me through hard times," Clements said. "Laguna Beach was more than a geographical location; it was a place in my mind."

Richard Law, who grew up in Arcadia, experienced something similar. He was 13 and on a surf trip with older friends when he first came to Laguna Beach and saw a world he didn't know existed. "I remember coming down to the beach by the old hotel and ... it was all guys."

"I was confused at first. But when I was a bit older, I thought back to it and it was obvious what they were. And I realized, well, that was probably me."

A SHADOW

Before the 1990s, Laguna Beach's gay community was a springboard for all sorts of connections, social and economic

"It was a lot harder, in those days, to get hired if people knew what you were," said Witkowski of Bounce. "We stuck together."

Witkowski moved to Laguna Beach from Los Angeles in 1987. The native New Yorker had held a series of jobs – dietitian, car salesman, caterer, tennis coach – that he had landed from connections made largely in gay hotspots.

In 1991, he found what he termed his "calling" as a bartender at Bounce, which until 2007 was known as Main Street. And even that job, he said, came about as a result of a connection he made at a gay bar, in this case with Bounce owner Alan Brewer at the Boom Boom Room, the former centerpiece of the city's mostly gay club scene.

"We were at the bar, we exchanged numbers, and the rest is history," Witkowski said.

Law, a landscape architect, said the gay community in Laguna Beach has helped him learn about upcoming construction projects. He thinks that part of its strength came from the fact that gays in the area believed they had nowhere else to turn.

"You weren't really allowed to have fun – you weren't allowed to be who you were – almost anywhere else in Orange County," Law said. "So everybody came here for that."

Clements agrees. But he said there might not be a need for such a strong gay community anymore, now that discrimination isn't as overt as it used to be.

"This place was a mecca," Clements said. "People came from all over the world. Now look at it. It's a shadow of its former self."

Aside from Bounce, all of the city's openly gay clubs have closed. Some of Bounce's regulars, such as Clements, are unhappy about what they see as the fraying of the community fabric. But others, like Law, see the shift in a more optimistic light, even if they're nostalgic for the old days.

"I see kids today getting married" to partners of the same sex, Law said, shaking his head in wonder.

"I see them inviting their families. It's almost unbelievable, what rights they now have. It baffles me. It baffles me, how things have changed."

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